Roots Before Branches
by Ballooney
Summary: Alice Brandon is asked a question by her daughter. The answers involve a girl of 19, and her dreams - including her long-lost dream of Prince Charming, in the form of the elusive, sophisticated and roguishly handsome Jasper Cullen. Lots of E/B.


Like they have for the past six months, Alice and April Brandon follow the routine that was born when the latter started preschool. As they make their way through the mazes of little streets that take them homw, Alice asks the same question she always has.

"Did you get any homework, baby?"

Previous answers have typically included coloring drawings in. They're printed drawings, and April's task is to stay inside the lines. Sometimes, April is asked to draw things – her family, her house, her favorite animal. When she was asked to draw her family, April drew her Mommy and her pet hamster. She and Alice live in a world of single-mothers, committed gay couples, fourth marriages, divorcés and divorcées. There are heterosexual long-time partnerships that aren't cemented on marriage. Some of April's classmates were made on petri-dishes and not in the throes of passion. As the drawings went, April's drawing was among the most conservative ones. There was no wicked stepmother with three children. There was no "child of the lesbian lover of now openly homosexual mother."

It's always been just the two of them, April and Alice. The more time passes, and the more April grows into her own little person, the more Alice enjoys her. The two of them have their own little routines – like getting a little Godiva chocolate every Friday as they weave through the streets on the way home, and making pancakes on Sunday morning while watching _The Price is Right_. Although she doesn't voice it, Alice has recently become as anti-penis as a hippie is anti-nukes. A penis, or rather the person adjacent to it, would only destroy the bubble of fun and happiness that she and April have made together. An extra surge of testosterone would throw Alice's life with her favorite, single girlfriend out of whack.

(In all honesty, though, Alice wishes the penis embargo wouldn't include an embargo from Alice's lady parts).

There aren't any dampers in their life together – a life Alice shields from bills, crippling debt and insomnia-inducing anxiety at the thought of stepping outside the budget. The occasional issue is only _homework. _

Much to Alice's dismay – not April's – the homework tasks have become progressively harder. The fascists at the kindergarten have started issuing _worksheets _like candy. April is a smart kid and doesn't need Alice to sit down with her, even though Alice does. They ask for simple addition and subtraction, for painstaking writing exercises with dotted-lines. Alice finds it all suffocating. Last week, they asked for the mommies and daddies to collect eggshells for an Easter project. Alice finds it a bit ridiculous that they asked in _February. _It's a big-ass project, apparently, if they need all 20 tots to collect a month's worth. Alice thought it couldn't possibly get any more difficult than that.

She was wrong, though.

April is gazing at Alice, her big, blue eyes wide. The two sapphires – exactly like Alice's – are sparkling with excitement and delight, the likes of which only a four-year-old can experience from life's simplest things.

"We need to make a _family tree_," April trills in her sweet little voice.

April may have told Alice that they were being trained to make crystal meth.

Her mouth goes dry.

"_What_?" she hisses.

"A family tree, Mommy," April says, her voice steady in spite of her mother's meltdown. Perhaps because of it, the four-year-old feels compelled to explain, "It's when all the people in the family are connected by lines on a paper. The mommies and the daddies are joined by a horizontal line, and their kids are connected to the line with a vertical line."

Alice's head starts to spin with all the mumbo-jumbo. She isn't fond of how the state of New York is beginning to mold her creative, fairy-like little girl into a robot. What is more, the Greenwich Village is a huge metropolis with people that aren't up in the business of their neighbors. Nobody gives a flying fuck that Alice is single and a mother, too. Those that _do _give a damn are those that grab her ass at the restaurant where she works as a hostess once April has gone to bed. It catches her by surprise that the kindergarten in the midst of the liberal, middle-class intellectualism that is the Greenwich Village is doing a "Family Unit." The state of New York is crushing April's free spirit so well that Alice's little girl is spewing out hetero-normative bullshit.

The dislike Alice feels for the teacher – a Mrs. Williams – begins to boil hot in her blood. The woman is probably the love child of a Neo-Nazi and Betty Crocker.

Alice is at a loss for words. When such a thing happens, she typically resorts to a parenting technique as old as time itself.

"You want to stop by Starbucks and get hot chocolate and a cookie, baby?"

She took an acting class once, at NYU. Its best use so far has been in lying to April. The cheer in Alice's voice is what hides the crushing despair, washing like a torrential current underneath her voice.

"Really, Mommy?" she half-screams, as though Alice has given her the best present in the universe. In spite of everything, Alice beams.

"Yes, baby," she coos.

Alice loves her more than everything in the world, and then some.

* * *

In spite of the fact that Alice is barely five feet tall, April isn't as tiny. In fact, April is about 3"4. It still melts Alice's heart that her own hand is big enough to envelop her four-year-old daughter's several times over. She tears up a little, every now and then, when she sees April walking into her kindergarten classroom. April's pink-colored backpack, with a sparkling butterfly on the lid, is large enough to fall past her little butt.

April is wrapped up like a pink little burrito, with a thick pink coat and a matching pink hat. Two pigtails fall past her ears. The cold has turned her cheeks pink, as well as the tip of her nose. Alice unwraps her carefully and puts their two coats on a stool next to the ones were they're sitting. Like Alice's, April's boot-clad feet dangle from the stool as she digs into a chocolate-chip cookie. Alice blows into the hot chocolate, hoping to cool it down.

People that don't know any better say that April is Alice's mini-me.

April has very delicate features, even for a four-year-old, with a pointy, upturned little nose. She has Alice's big, blue, sapphire-colored eyes, and inky black hair. People don't realize that April's mouth is shaped like her father's – because Alice doubts there are very many that have kissed it – or that her jaw looks like her Aunt's. Alice never met the aforementioned Aunt, even though she appears often on TV. The aforementioned Aunt has been an ever-frequent appearance on television, now that her husband is a Senator for the state of Tennessee. Besides, Rosalie Cullen-McCarthy was a very big public figure even before she hyphenated her name. There's a dent at the tip of April's nose that gives it character. People don't realize it's also one of the many distinguishing features of the stunningly beautiful Mrs. McCarthy. April's height is the _one _visible trait Alice's baby got from her father, even though the pediatrician says its too soon to tell.

In her mind, Alice calls the aforementioned father "The Ejaculator." Aside from the second X-chromosome and his sperm, April's never got much from her father in terms of characteristics. Alice knew The Ejaculator well enough to know that he wasn't nearly as talkative as she was. Neither is April. Unlike Alice in a past life, April doesn't fill silences with chatter.

Life has embittered Alice enough that she's appreciative of the occasional silence. She uses them to study April. Often, Alice does gaze at her baby with the drunkenly, lovingly adoring look she recognizes as maternal. The fact that she looks at April so often lets her see what other people don't. She sees traces of the Ejaculator in her face, traces that others wouldn't see lest they look to closely. Even then, Alice doubts many people would be able to pinpoint the Ejaculator's identity.

Few people, after all, would believe that "a key player in America's national security" and the "most capable man of his generation" would father a child with a 19-year-old waitress.

April is too young to understand the mechanics of how "The Ejaculator" earned his nickname, but Alice hopes she can understand _why._

"Sweetheart," Alice begins. In her heart, she hopes that April isn't yet sharp enough to realize that this conversation was brought on by Mrs. William's anal family tree.

"I need you to listen to Mommy very carefully," Alice says softly. "Can you do that for Mommy?"

She's talking in a patient voice that seemed to come along with breast milk. Never before in her life had Alice been able to hold such a calm conversation.

April looks up at her Mom. She's always had strikingly delicate features, and looks like a younger, cuter version of Tinkerbell. Satiated by the hot chocolate and the cookie, April nods.

Alice is thankful that she inherited "The Ejaculator's" more peaceful nature. She's not always _bursting at the seams with energy, _every second of every day – unless she's playing. Even in the womb, she always made things easier.

"All babies are made by one man and one woman," Alice begins. Desperately, she hopes April won't ask how.

Like her father would – as Alice admits grudgingly – April digests the information. She mulls it over. At the same age, Alice would be bursting with hundreds of questions.

Eventually, April's brow furrows in confusion.

"But Kimmy has two daddies," April chimes, interjecting immediately. In that respect, April is _nothing _like the Ejaculator. The Ejaculator is cold and calculating; he would've emitted a carefully measured response. April is definitely her mother's daughter.

"Kimmy has two daddies that love her very, very much. They chose to _be _Kimmy's daddies. But Kimmy was made by one man, and one woman," Alice explains patiently, in a soft voice. She doesn't want to get into the issue of whether the sperm donor was one of Kimmy's daddies. "Does that make sense?"

Alice sucks in a breath, as if hoping it will give her strength.

"You were also made by one man, and by me," Alice continues. She grabs her daughter's little hand and kisses it very gently, injecting all of the love she feels into the gesture. "You grew in my tummy, until you were big enough to come out. And then I decided that I would be your mommy, because I loved you more than anything else in the whole entire world."

April nods, digesting the information. The more patient version of herself that was born along with April gives her daughter space. There are so many things April could say. Alice dreads each and every one of them.

"Why didn't the man stay?" April asks.

Alice heart sinks. This is the crux of the matter, the reason why she needed to have this conversation today. It's the fundamental reason why Alice decided to explain things no 4-year-old has the capacity to understand. It is a question Alice struggles with to this day.

"Because.." Alice begins in a quavering voice. She traces circles on her daughter's dimpled, delicate little hand.

There are so many ways to answer the question. Alice could say that it was because it was be best for Alice to raise April by herself. It would be a half-truth. Alice has wondered, and will always wonder, if that would be true. Alice could say that the Ejaculator is a castrated, motherfucking bastard... Something deep, deep in her gut, as old as time, tells her it wont be the best thing for her child's emotional health.

Finally, she says,

"Because the Eja – the man," she amends, "the man didn't want to make a baby at that time in his life."

Alice isn't a spiritual person, but she pegs some form of divine intervention for what she says a little bit later.

"But the important thing to understand is that he didn't want a _baby_. He didn't not want _you. _He didn't know that you would turn into this amazing, beautiful, funny, playful, smart little girl. If he had known that the baby would turn into _you, _April Brandon, he would probably change his mind, and you would be his favorite thing in the world."

Of that, Alice is absolutely positive.

As a slow smile spreads across April's face as she listens, Alice's heart warms up like the hot chocolate. That was the important thing out of this entire conversation - to protect April from ever feeling unloved. The Ejaculator may not be present to give April a father's love. It has stopped mattering to Alice. She loves her enough for the both of them.

As a testament to her intelligence and to her parentage, April mulls the information over – and comes up with a solution. Her eyes light up as though as the proverbial light bulb comes on.

"Why doesn't he come meet me?"

On the one hand, Alice breathes a sigh of relief. For some reason – Alice's explanation was well-crafted, or the fact that she lives in a world were biological parents don't necessarily raise their children – April doesn't sound hurt. She sounds conversational – and sure of the fact that she is worthy of being loved, insanely and devotedly, by anybody. Alice wants to weep with relief.

On the other hand, April has delivered a tiny punch to the stomach. Alice doesn't want to explain that The Ejaculator is the one man in the universe that could probably know the location of any given person on earth at any given moment. Four-year-old April is too young to understand things like Ed Snowden, and the NSA and hardcore Republicans, such as the Ejaculator. If he wanted to know, he could.

"He knows where to find us," Alice finally says, in a faraway voice, contemplating the past. "One day, maybe, he will meet you, and he will be very happy he made you."

Alice loves her daughter's personality. Because April doesn't interrupt, Alice is able to pile on all the information April needs to know. She's young enough for Alice to be able to manipulate her train of thought, too. But April isn't easily swayed, either, or weak. April is the strongest little person Alice knows.

With a wink, Alice adds: "I'll let you know if he ever changes his mind."

She sounds like she's gushing to a girlfriend about men at a bar. Even if the tone isn't appropriate, she is talking to a girlfriend – to her best girlfriend, in the history of her life. Nobody can read her moods – or make her happier – better than April. Nobody makes her laugh quite like April does, even if April isn't always intentionally funny. Alice enjoys April's company more than anybody else's, in the whole entire world.

In spite of that, Alice is her mother, and to distract her yet again, Alice says:

"Want to go watch Tangled, Tinkerbell?"

* * *

Alice has seen the movie _Tangled_ so many times she can sing "_Mother Knows Best_" in her sleep. Like any rational adult, she's sick of it. It's a paradox of motherhood that she feels excited about watching it because April always does. She takes it as an opportunity to cuddle with her daughter, and to give her popcorn sprinkled with chocolate chips. She uses it as an opportunity to reinforce in April's brain that she is _so loved, _and that Alice enjoys being her mother.

In spite of that, she knows she isn't out of the water.

There are other questions April could ask - so many of them. If Alice were talking to an older child, the barrage of questions would drown her. Who is he? How did you meet? Why didn't he want me? The last one is the million dollar question Alice spent the nights of her pregnancy pondering over.

While April happily watches Flynn Ryder, Rapunzel and a species-confused horse run away from the Royal Guard, Alice sneaks off with the pretense of going to the bathroom. Her intention is to map out a way to minimize the awkward questions. The fucking family tree should be called "Pandora's Box." Alice wants to avoid the subject altogether. She's been dead to her parents, in al all four are alive and kicking. Evil dies hard.

She picks up April's back pack, and goes into the kitchen. Alice fishes out a school-issued notebook entitled "Agenda." She thinks its fucking ridiculous to have four-year-old children have "Agendas." If she'd wanted April to grow up in a constrained, oppressive system, Alice would have enrolled her at a military school. Every Monday, the kids glue a sheet with their homework to one of it's many dated pages. Indeed, Alice runs her fingers down its length- and finds that Thursday's homework is the Family Tree.

As there are no further instructions, Alice assumes there's some kind of accompanying worksheet. Again, Alice has no doubt Mrs. Williams is a minion of the state of New York, trying to turn children into robots. There's probably some Republican wife at the heart of all of this, drilling into the minds of children that "marriage is between a man and a woman." She fishes April's folder out.

The worksheet is painful in its simplicity.

There's a box that says "Me", with four other boxes to the left and right. Clearly, the worksheet wasn't made for the Greenwich Village. Nobody in the city of New York can _afford_ four children. Even the Irish don't push it past three. The people that can don't enroll their children in public schools. The worksheet was probably intended for rural Iowa.

From there, "Me" is joined b to two other boxes. Those two boxes each have their own sets of "T"s and their respective boxes. There are dotted lines underneath each box.

Alice lays out the sheet in the kitchen table. The rest of the movie passes by in a blur. By the time Rapunzel becomes the ruler of her kingdom, Alice has made a decision. She will start out with _her_ side of the family, and then make her way to the Ejaculators. It shames her to have to pretend to know very little about April's paternal family. One day, April will know what a "slut" is. Alice doesn't want to come off as one. She knows a lot - but then again, so do most well-informed Americans.

Once the movie ends, she and April go their separate ways to put on pajamas. Alice takes the time to collect herself. She rubs her own neck in the hopes that it will rid her of the tension. No 24-year-old should ever feel this tense. Alice then moves into the tiny little bathroom sandwiched between their two bedrooms. She studies her reflection for signs of weakness or pain. Although April has curled into her bed many times to comfort her, Alice tries her damnedest to keep April away from the two emotions.

She checks to see if April is done. The tiny, pink bedroom - adorably neat through April's own efforts - is empty of its owner. Slowly, Alice makes her way to the kitchen. With both little feet dangling, April is transfixed on the Family Tree. Tears pooling in her eyes, Alice approaches April and peeks over her shoulder.

On the dotted line below "Me", April wrote her name. On one of the boxes on top, April wrote "Momy", and underneath, she wrote "Alis." On the box to the left of "Alis", April wrote "Man."


End file.
